After attending a Friday morning Bible study, three members began to meet on Monday nights to get to know one another better and hang out. They started to dabble in the world of home brewing, and the hangout blossomed into Monday Night Brewing.
Joel Iverson, Jeff Heck and Jonathan Baker used home brewing as a means to connect, sharing their creations and forming a bond in the process − something men tend to struggle with.
“I think sometimes with guys, a shared task or a shared activity is how we build relationship,” Iverson said. “And so it was kind of this shared task that we would sort of brew the beer, but form relationships. And then we started inviting friends and neighbors and co-workers.”
The three each came from white-collar jobs, which Iverson referred to as “boring business jobs.” As an operations consultant, Iverson had spent years working on campaigns for different quick-scale businesses. He and his partners longed to “put down roots” and build their own business.
They began to test the market by contract brewing in 2011 and later opened their first location in West Midtown Atlanta in early 2013. Over the course of about six years, the trio began to leave their jobs and focus on Monday Night Brewing.
Monday Night Brewing has since opened six locations: two in Atlanta along with one in Birmingham, Charlotte and Nashville. The latest to open has been Monday Night Proofing Co. in Knoxville, which sits in the recently renovated Kern’s Food Hall.
They had spent years looking for a way to bring Monday Night Brewing to Knoxville but had never found the right fit. They were in a position to be able to turn down opportunities, so they decided not to settle with any location.
“We're not looking for the partner who's trying to say, ‘Hey, I just want to slap you in a space and then I want to flip the property and go sell it to somebody else,’” Iverson said. “There's a lot of people in real estate that are very cutthroat capitalists. We want to be partnered with the people that are saying, ‘Hey, we want to do placemaking and community development, that's where our passion is.”
Iverson, Heck and Baker kept a close eye on Kern’s since most of its locations had been old buildings that were renovated. They came in contact with the developers, who were also based in Atlanta, and found that they shared a lot of goals with Monday Night Brewing.
“We all want to have a successful business and have sales and revenue profit,” Iverson said. “But the most important thing is how are you going to get there and how you're going to build that. Where and how you build the space. It's got to be sort of people over profit to make it a success in our minds.”
Now settling into its place at Kern’s, Monday Night Brewing will focus on building its brand along with the community in Knoxville. It will also partner with local organizations and become a “good community member” through charitable work.
“Our purpose as a company is we say that Monday Night Brewing exists to deepen relationships over some of the best beer in the world,” Iverson said.
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